


we’ll fill these blank pages (in my mind)

by azurish



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dreams, M/M, Unrequited Love, self-delusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 20:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire <i>wants</i> to try.</p><p>"He dreams, he has dreamed, more than the average man.  It is probably a remnant from his artist days, when he learned the habit of maintaining an active imagination.  Back then, his mind supplied canvasses with the kind of limitless possibility that even his dreams shy away from now.  (He aches, just a bit, when he sees blank pages nowadays, a pain affecting whatever phantom limb of his used to draw – not his hands, though, earthy things that they are; there is a disconnect in his mind, a refusal to believe that these hands, now so accustomed to brawling, to gesticulating crudely, to holding a glass, had ever been capable of doing anything else.)"</p>
            </blockquote>





	we’ll fill these blank pages (in my mind)

            Grantaire dreams.

            He dreams, he has dreamed, more than the average man.  It is probably a remnant from his artist days, when he learned the habit of maintaining an active imagination.  Back then, his mind supplied canvasses with the kind of limitless possibility that even his dreams shy away from now.  (He aches, just a bit, when he sees blank pages nowadays, a pain affecting whatever phantom limb of his used to draw – not his hands, though, earthy things that they are; there is a disconnect in his mind, a refusal to believe that these hands, now so accustomed to brawling, to gesticulating crudely, to holding a glass, had ever been _capable_ of doing anything else.)

            His dreams are pedestrian; he knows that.  Men like Enjolras or Combeferre dream of progress, of republics and railroads and riots.  Grantaire’s dreams do not aspire to such heights; he mocks these things during the day and fears them at night.  He dreams instead of his friends, of his customary locales, of things that have happened and things that have not.

            They are blurred, confused dreams – like his mind after an evening of drinking has dulled his brain, but without the soporific buzz of the alcohol or the comforting laughter of his friendly audience.  He is accustomed to waking disoriented in unknown places, with his head nestled against the soft wood of a table in some café or even, once or twice, with his face planted in the gutter, dirty water trickling down around his temples; he often does not recognize his surroundings, and dream and reality pulse into each other and mix into a throbbing hangover of liquor and longing.

            There are scenes he would rather forget that reappear in his sleep.  Once, he dreams of a frustrated Combeferre who morphs into his mother, angry at his younger sister again (and it is worse – it always has been so much worse – to see her exercise her fury on poor Sophie than it is to bear his friend’s scolding, both because he knows that the other man is trying to help him and because it hurts more, with the hot, helpless fury of youth, to hear Sophie cursed out).  He wakes up afterwards with the gray pre-dawn light trickling in through his open windows and he doesn’t even recognize his own room.  Another time, he dreams that the laughter the others reserve for his buffoonery takes on a scornful, mocking tone and there is no place for him anymore, nothing he can do that is safe and welcomed.  He is louder than ever the day afterwards, relieved when he hears fondness and amusement at the Musain that evening.  Sometimes, his dreams shade more to the surreal: one night he dreams of gray-eyed Athena transforming Bossuet into the eagle they’ve named him for and the unlucky man snatching him up in his claws as an unintentional parody of a Ganymede and flying off, far away from France.  On another occasion, he dreams that Feuilly has engineered a stairway to the heavens and is insisting that they all help him build it out of fans.  He rarely dreams of the men he knew before he first came to the backroom of the Musain, though; somehow, the gravity of Les Amis de L’ABC has dragged in his subconscious and he orbits them night after night in his sleep.

            Enjolras smiles in his direction one day and he dreams that night of writing a pamphlet railing against the excesses of Charles X and crafting an argument so sharply brilliant that he convinces dozens of men on the spot to pledge to the future republic.  He wakes up in the middle of the night with the glittering edges of phrases like “natural rights” and “social contract” pressed into his mind and he is out of bed and at his desk before he remembers that he has no ink and no words and no capacity for the praxis of such a dream.

            He sits down at his desk instead.  His fingers still numb from sleep, he withdraws a sheet of paper from a drawer and puts it in front of him, stares at the faintly-glowing outline of the white sheet in the darkness.  For a long moment, his hands itch to pick up a piece of charcoal – to draw, to write, simply to hold; he doesn’t know.  Instead, he rests shaking fingers on the paper, smoothing it out, the parchment cool and dry against his skin.  His hands leave a dirty mark on the page.  The seconds slip by and fade away and he doesn’t know what he wants, but he’s sure, with the unshakeable firmness of belief of a man who is still half-dreaming, that he’s not going to find it.

            Eventually, he crosses his arms over the paper, lays his head down above the blank page, and sleeps.  Morpheus visits and Grantaire dreams again.


End file.
